A graphical user interface is often used to facilitate a user's ability to navigate through large amounts of data. For example, if a user has downloaded a large number of MP3 audio files onto a hard drive of a personal computer, it may be cumbersome for the user to find a desired file by searching through a displayed list of stored MP3 audio files. To facilitate the search process the user may use a graphical user interface that enables the user to store the audio files in various user-defined folders. Thus the user may store related audio files in predetermined folders in a predetermined order. For example, the user may identify all of the audio files that relate to country music and store the country music audio files in a “Country Music” folder. Furthermore, the user may generate sub-folders within the “Country Music” folder that further sort the country music by artist, album title, and/or song name. Afterwards, the user can quickly sort through a large amount of MP3 audio files to locate a particular audio file associated with a music genre, artist, album, and/or song. Although graphical user interfaces facilitate a user's ability to locate desired audio files, the graphical user interfaces suffer form a number of drawbacks.
One such drawback is that graphical user interfaces relies on a user's ability to remember a visual or alphanumeric element associated with an audio file. In the case of music, a user typically must remember the genre, artist, album, and/or title of a desired vocal or instrumental. However, the user may only remember a few words of a song or a few notes of a tune. If this is the case, the user must guess as to which visual element represents the desired song until the desired song is located.
Another drawback is that the user may be in an environment where a graphical user interface is not provided or, even if provided, is not convenient to use. For example, many automobiles come equipped with a multi-CD storage device that enables a driver to play a plurality of compact disks. Sometimes these multi-CD storage devices have primitive graphical user interfaces that only display the number of compact disks in the storage device and the number of tracks on a given compact disk. As a result, if the driver has not memorized the numerical identification of each compact disk in the storage device and the track number of every song on every compact disk, the driver must blindly search through the tracks of the compact disks until the desired audio content is located. If a more advanced graphical user interface is provided, the driver must still remember a visual element (e.g., album, artist, and/or title) associated with a desired song. Moreover, even if the driver has memorized which visual element is associated with a desired song, the driver may not be able to safely remove his or her focus from the surrounding driving conditions to locate the visual element displayed on the graphical user interface.
The present invention is directed to overcoming these drawbacks.